Step Into The Arena

I did some PvP the other night for the first time in a while. I’ve found Resto Shaman to be an extremely fun spec to PvP with. You’ve got the healing of course, but shamans also have some amazing support abilities to keep it fun when you’re not frantically keeping people alive. Priests are my favourite plaything. They have so many yummy buffs to purge.

I tend to stick with EotS and AB, since these are the BGs I have the best understanding of strategy for. I don’t care so much about winning, I’m here for fun, and it’s the matches that are even enough to have a fluid back-and-forth that are the most fun. And the one-sided ones at least tend to be over quickly.

While I was standing around in Stormwind afterwards, still wearing my PvP gear, a Rogue whispered me asking if I’d like to do some arenas for points. I told him I’m not very good, which is true. I’m a long way off understanding the tactical dance that is arena PvP. But he invited me to his arena team — named “Rogue ‘n healer” which made me smirk [I feel compelled to create a “Resto Shaman ‘n dps” team as a subtle form of protest] and queued us up for a total of seven matches, which I guessed he would since he already had three recorded for that week, dropping group without a word the moment the seventh ended. Always slightly disappointing when people live down to your low expectations.

In the end I received no in-game reward from this experience, but what I gained was a reminder that arenas are god damn fun. I always enjoyed this aspect of the game, what little I did of it, and especially considering how poor I always was at it. And though my Rogue friend and I only won one of those seven matches, I felt by the end that I was starting to catch on; that I was learning how to watch what my two opponents were doing and how to counter it, what abilities and techniques to use to disable one while keeping pressure on the other.

The only thing currently preventing me from creating a team of my own is a reluctance to foist my noob arse onto someone more experienced and have them lose patiently with me while I learn how things work. Or I suppose the alternative is to find the first trade chat idiot who will accept an unconditional invite.

Oh, and I lied when I said I didn’t get anything out of this. That one match we won nabbed this Glorious Icecrown Raider his Step Into The Arena achievement. Told you I was inexperienced. =P